Alzheimer's disease has been a scourge on the elderly for decades. Those days are coming to an end with fascinating research from two leading Neurologists in the United States. Dr. David Perlmutter, author of the #1 bestseller Grain Brain and many articles, and Dr. Dale Bredesen of UCLA and author of hundreds of articles are giving us concrete data on how to help neurobehavioral disorders like autism and Alzheimer's disease.
They both have come to the conclusion that the best approach to reversing cognitive decline is through a multi step process that involves modifying lifestyle factors that promote neurodegeneration. In the brain's of these patients there is an imbalance between the signals that make neurons, neural plasticity, versus the signals for neurite retraction and synaptic degeneration, neural degeneration.
After listening to two podcasts by Dr. Jeffrey Bland, I was blown away by the possibilities of neural regeneration if we can shift the lifestyle needle toward health. Dr Brednesen's study is the first in history to show a slowing of cognitive decline and also show signs of reversal!!!
See the table in the study for details of the treatment paradigm.
Briefly, he is focused on maintaining a healthy diet that prevents blood sugar spikes, inflammation and also has frequent fasting to induce ketosis (acidifying the blood by removing sugar from the diet to burn fat) that is beneficial to the brains's neurons. This is very much like a paleo or Wahl's protocol diet. They optimize minerals and vitamins. They encourage exercise, adequate sleep, cognitive training, stress reduction techniques and other functional medicine based lifestyle modification practices.
In our clinic we are doing similar things in children with neurobehavioral disorders like autism, ADHD, OCD, etc.. We are seeing similar benefits to a lifestyle systems biology based approach to neuron salvage and regeneration in our population.
Dr. M
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